7 classic films adapted from books

Featuring tales of espionage, monsters and disappearing train passengers, did you know that these classic blockbusters were all originally based on books?

First published in 1974, Peter Benchley’s Jaws inspired one of the greatest disaster movies of all time, and taught a generation of swimmers that ‘it’s never safe to go back in the water’. Read more about the history of Jaws here.

Best known for creating master detective Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also dabbled in writing what we now call speculative fiction. His most famous novel in this genre, The Lost World was first published in 1912 and 85 years later formed part of the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Jurassic Park.

Joy Adamson’s Born Free introduced the world to Elsa the lioness - the orphaned cub Adamson and her husband raised in their home in Kenya. The memoir was adapted into an Academy-award winning film of the same name starring Virginia McKenna and Geoffrey Keen in 1966.

The final British film that Alfred Hitchcock made before his move from London to Hollywood, The Lady Vanishes is the unsettling story of the seemingly impossible disappearance of a passenger on a cross-Europe train, based on Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel of the same name.

Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, Gone With the Wind introduced the world to privileged, beautiful, ruthless Scarlett O’Hara, famously portrayed by Vivien Leigh in the 1939 film adaptation. This story of love, loss and a nation divided has endured as a classic, both in film and literature since it was first published in 1936.

Following British spy Richard Hannay as he is pursued by enemies unknown whilst searching for the mysterious ‘thirty-nine steps’, the first novel in John Buchan’s pre-WWI espionage series has inspired numerous film and theatre adaptations. The most celebrated was Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 adaptation, which was ranked as the fourth best British film of the twentieth century by the British Film Institute.

Telling the true story of their bouncing bombs, enduring courage and honed flying techniques, the 1943 ‘dam-busting’ campaign of the 617 Squadron Lancashire bombers was immortalised in film in 1955. Published in 1951, Paul Brickhill’s The Dam Busters, which inspired the movie, was the first paperback book to sell over a million copies in Britain.